She left home unceremoniously two years ago, and on Tuesday returned in a casket bearing her dismembered body.
Esther Wambui was buried in Miti Mingi, Elementaita, Nakuru County, the family of the beautiful and charming girl pained by the circumstances of her death.
The body of Ms Wambui, 18, was found last week dumped outside the GSU’s Recce training grounds in Ruiru, Kiambu County, with a revenge note scrawled on her palms, chest and thighs.
Her mother, overwhelmed by emotions, kept mum during the entire funeral service. But when Ms Wambui’s father, Mr Samuel Mbugua, rose to speak, he described his daughter as a treasure he was privileged to have possessed.
Although she abandoned her studies in Form Two to find work and try to improve her family’s financial status, Ms Wambui, her father said, was a loving and obedient child who dedicated herself to church work before she left home.
“My daughter was ever joyful. There is not a single day we ever quarrelled over pending work. Sometimes she would even forget to eat because she always wanted everything perfect,” he said, his deep voice tinged with pain.
“We never heard from her after she left home two years ago, and we wondered all along where she might have been, until the news of her death reached us. We are at a loss.”
He told hundreds of mourners who thronged his homestead that he had not had a wink of sleep, trying to comprehend the cruelty of his daughter’s killing.
He urged the police to expedite their investigations into the murder, saying that all he wanted was justice for her.
“We still have many questions over her death and we won’t have peace until she gets justice,” Mr Mbugua said.
Ms Wambui’s purported husband, Simon Ngigi, 23, who was questioned by police immediately after her death, attended her burial alongside his friends and family, but he was not given a chance to address the mourners.
Ms Wambui’s uncle, Newton Kamau, emphasised the need for speedy investigations into the murder, saying it was necessary for the family to find closure.
“I remember Wambui and I would go to church together on Saturdays to prepare for Sunday mass. We used to sing in the choir together. I wonder what came over her that she decided to drop out of school,” he said.
Pupils from Gathima Primary School, Ms Wambui’s alma mater, attended the burial.
In an interview on Saturday, Mr Mbugua told the Nation that he had sacrificed a lot to pay for his daughter’s education, and that it was unfortunate that she dropped out of school.
“I was ready to sacrifice in order to give her a good life despite the fact that we depend on menial jobs for our survival,” he said.
“I have another child, a son, who has completed Form Four and whom I educated with the little money I earn.”
Reports indicate that after leaving home, Ms Wambui met Mr Ngigi, a labourer in Ruiru, but the two then moved to Nairobi, where she remained jobless until she secured work at a restaurant, where she earned Sh300 a day.
The couple lived together for seven months. In his statement to police, Mr Ngigi said he had escorted Ms Wambui to her workplace at around 5.30am on Monday, the same day she went missing.
They parted a short distance from the eatery where she worked. Later that day, he was called and informed that she had died.
On Thursday, Ruiru Directorate of Criminal Investigation boss Justus Ombati said the woman appeared to have been raped.
The words scrawled on Ms Wambui’s body, he said, could be a ploy by the killers to mislead investigators.
Security camera footage retrieved from the eatery shows she left for home on Sunday at 8.30pm and her husband did not pick her up from work.
A postmortem conducted at City Mortuary in Nairobi on Friday indicated that she died from strangulation.
